VanBurenPhilips on 9/1/2013 at 07:54
The slug ship is weird and wonderful :)
Look at these plucky fellows.
(
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010080011I1357716681727289)
Inline Image:
http://s02.imageupper.com/1_t/8/I1357716681727289_1.jpgI decided to make one extra jump before hitting a store - it turned out to be a sun, and it went very badly indeed. I jumped away and arrived at the store with at least two thirds of the ship on fire, and broke door controls. Fixing them took some doing, but I was finally able to vent out all the flames and patch the ship up. I'd already allowed myself a glimmer of hope with that great early weapon find, but after my whole crew getting through this nightmare by the skins of their teeths, I was adamant these guys would make it to the end and kick the shit out of that flagship. Four jumps later an auto scout knocked out their O2 and medbay, and seconds after destroying it they all space-drowned.
Al_B on 9/1/2013 at 10:35
Quote Posted by VanBurenPhilips
...broke door controls. Fixing them took some doing
It looks like you have enough scrap to upgrade your doors one level. From what I've heard that would "fix" the doors and allow you to vent the ship but it's not something I've tried myself yet.
Sounds like a good mission. I love it when you manage to pull things back from the brink - even if you end up dead a few jumps later at least it feels like you've tried.
faetal on 9/1/2013 at 11:44
I upgrade doors as soon as my dodge is at 30% and my shields are on 2. It really makes boarding and fires less of a PITA, especially in nebulae, as you can see where your intruders are by which door they are attacking. Also means that venting to kill or herd intruders becomes a much more viable strategy.
Ulukai on 9/1/2013 at 12:09
Quote Posted by VanBurenPhilips
Congrats, first win is pretty satisfying eh? Looks like you had an aggressive setup there, did you have the whole flagship on fire? :)
Ja :) Most of it was on fire at the end, but it was by no means a pushover. Initially during stage 1, the crew were putting out fires as fast as I was starting them, eventually focused on
taking out the engines. This meant my offense could aggressively target the shields due to the higher hit chance gleaned from taking their engines offline.Quote Posted by VanBurenPhilips
It just occurred to me that level 1 cloak + 1 power is a fair bit cheaper to buy than level 4 shields + 2 power, and cheaper to run, obviously. I've found that if you've got high evasion (engines 6+ and decent crew) and a good attack plan, then 3 shields will get you through the flagship battle on normal. The real danger will be
the special 'power surge' attacks in phases 2 and 3. Level 4 shields certainly help here, but level 1 cloak would guarantee that you dodge the lot, and cools down quick enough to use every time.
Absolutely,
don't think I would have got through the power surge phase without cloak, and 3 shield was more than up to the job.Quote Posted by VanBurenPhilips
Well I've done a run with the bizarre Slug ship type B ... But the Rock cruiser type B is pretty badass
Congrats, I've yet to obtain either! My latest run through was with the... Federation Cruiser?
The thing with the artillery gun, anyway. Pretty powerful, but I was a casualty of the power surge.VanBurenPhilips on 9/1/2013 at 19:50
Quote Posted by Al_B
...upgrade your doors one level. From what I've heard that would "fix" the doors and allow you to vent the ship but it's not something I've tried myself yet.
Ah! Yes I'd read that too, and totally forgot. It is with great shame and regret I must tell you, my thoughts at the time were poorly composed and I believe I may have yelled swear words and "WE'RE ALL GOING TO FUCKING BURN TO DEATH" at my monitor. Anyway... I read some other comments that saying the upgrade fix doesn't work, so I'm wondering if it's something that changed in an update. Either way, looks like we'll have to test it out.
Quote Posted by faetal
I upgrade doors as soon as my dodge is at 30% and my shields are on 2. It really makes boarding and fires less of a PITA, especially in nebulae, as you can see where your intruders are by which door they are attacking. Also means that venting to kill or herd intruders becomes a much more viable strategy.
Yeah, I've been treating med, O2 and subsystems as late-game luxuries, but a ship that starts with doors 2 (Zoltan?) made me reconsider. In fact I think that was my run with weak crew, so the doors were a godsend. After reading your comment, about halfway through my most recent run I made several cheap upgrades to lvl2 that I usually ignore until the end, and it was a big defensive boost.
Quote Posted by Ulukai
Ja :) Most of it was on fire at the end, but it was by no means a pushover. Initially during stage 1, the crew were putting out fires as fast as I was starting them, eventually focused on
taking out the engines. This meant my offense could aggressively target the shields due to the higher hit chance gleaned from taking their engines offline.This is interesting, I've seen lots of comments saying people target the engines to ruin the enemy's evasion (or stall their FTL jump), but I always go for the helm first. It usually seems weaker (I rarely get lvl3 sensors, so I'm just judging by hits) and easier to get to red, which = 0% evasion, if I've got it right. I suppose the downside is it can be repaired much quicker.
Well, I
finally got to the end with the Mantis type A. It's a great starting ship, yet somehow I've found it waaaay harder than other runs with trickier ships. My previous attempts ended in sector 1, 1 and 3! Partly bad choices, partly bad luck, but this latest one was all down to some top-drawer stupidity on my part. Too tired to write it up now, but I've just experienced my best FTL story so far :D
VanBurenPhilips on 11/1/2013 at 01:30
I followed a tip I'd seen about boarder tactics, saying focus solely on defense. It worked brilliantly with the Mantis ship, I only upgraded weapon system by one point in the entire game, all the rest went heavily on shields and engines early, then faster teleporter and a few small upgrades to toughen the ship. I was also lucky to find a drone system, defense I and a drone arm fairly early, and having not worried about weapons I could easily afford them. Mantis A starts with 0 drones and I didn't gain many, so the recovery arm was ideal. With high shields and evasion and a defense drone I could use as often as I needed, I rarely had to worry about hull damage. I took the opportunity to train my guys up early on, and when I had teleporter 2 I sent my away teams into remote scouts which trained them up pretty quick too. Before long I had four mantis boarders and four systems crew, all fully skilled, and I'd added a boarding drone too. No horrendous bad luck, so this run went pretty well for the most part.
Then I decided to finish it last night after only getting a couple of hours sleep the night before, and discovered that tired brains are not good at FTL. First mistake, not stupid but complacent, pushing the risk-taking a little too far - I lost one mantis because I teleported him home too late. He was alive when I clicked the return and the animation played, but then there was a thud and a whimper, and he arrived in a dead heap on my transporter room floor, possibly with bits of rockman knuckle mingled in. He wasn't one of my original crew, he was Filip - so pleased to get away from his hick planet, he left his family to join my crew, I made him murder folk and smash their stuff up, and then I got him killed. Oops.
It's all endgame from here, so I'll put the lot in spoiler tags. If you've got to the endgame but not yet seen it all, I'd still think twice about reading all of this - don't want to spoil all the surprises ;)
I lucked into rescuing a random rockman from a slave ship in my last battle in sector 7, then the brainwrongs really took over.
Stupid thing no1: There was a store on the way to the flagship. I still had my two starting weapons, small bomb and basic laser, plus a breach missile and an ion bomb. Mantis has only 3 weapon slots, so I had to choose which I would use. The ion bomb had sat in reserve all along, I never found a use for it and should have sold it but now decided my small laser would be totally useless against the flagship and sold that instead. What an idiot. Especially since I'd already seen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_155C5xMfIM) this video of a guy going up against the flagship with no hull damage weapons. I wasn't quite the same, I had one good hull damaging weapon (the breach missile), but I didn't have a huge amount of ammo. Why I thought an all-missile setup would be ok, I cannot explain. Anyway, off to phase one... the plan was to get away teams into three of the weapon pods as quickly as possible and take them out (leaving just the triple-laser guy alone), ignore the cloak, bomb the medbay and slaughter everyone else. It went fine. My ship came out ok, my crew kicked their arses and when they'd punched the flagship's innards til they could be punched no more, I brought them back and 2 or 3 missiles finished the job. Only the boarding drone was a let-down, it did kill a crewman but then went straight for the O2 room which would have been very bad, so I just powered it down.Phase 2. Got the flagship's guns and drone control down fairly quickly and then set about breaking the other systems, but my dodging wasn't so lucky, I took a lot of hits from special attacks and ended up with hull in the red. Was also dismayed to see the flagship still had loads of hull left, and I was dangerously low on missiles. Finished this phase with only 3 left. Luckily there was still a repair station nearby, and it was right alongside the flagship's route. Had to go through a rebel battle on the way, but it was an easy boarding kill and netted me a ton of scrap. I was surprised how generous the repair was (right back up in the green) and now I had a few extra missiles and drone parts. Not many, but I was sure I had enough to finish phase 3.Stupid thing no2: I forgot to spend any of that scrap. There was enough for a couple of small upgrades that would've soaked up some damage. Oh well. Stupid thing no3: I forgot phase three had Zoltan super-shields. (-_-) Nothing I could do but take them down with missiles. First one missed, I felt like crying. I tried throwing a boarding drone at it to see if it would take a point off, no such luck. I think it only took two hits from the breach missile, maybe three, but I had a few misses so by the time it was down I only had 2 shots left and I'd taken loads of hits. Only then could I teleport my guys in and take that triple launcher out. I sent the boarding drone over and he went straight for the O2 again, the shithead. Off! With everything but O2 and triple-laser down, the flagship still had loads of hull left, 2 missiles wouldn't do it. While I was trying to get my useless head around this, Stupid thing no4: the Zoltan shields came back online. I knew this happened, I'd seen it just once before but of course forgotten. My guys were still over there: two in the main body of the ship, two still in the missile pod, and you can't teleport through Zoltan shields. For a little while I thought I was screwed, but then it dawned on me there was (as far as I know) only one way forward. I suddenly remembered ion weapons do more damage to Zoltan shields and used my ion bomb - no chance of missing, thankfully, and it took off exactly half the bar. One more of those, Zoltan shield down and zero ammo for me. As quickly as teleporter timeouts would allow, I brought my two guys home from the missile pod, then sent one back to the missile pod and one into the still manned laser pod. For good measure, I also sent my now-pointless gunner over into the main ship to join the two guys there. A couple of seconds later the Zoltan shields came back up, and I knew there was no way to bring those crewmen back. When my mantis killed that last rebel gunner, the flagship went into AI-repair mode. I waited while the same mantis broke the gun; now everything was red except the O2. I gritted my teeth through special attacks, there was nothing more I could do back at my ship but keep on top of any fires & repairs. At last, all the flagship's systems went orange at once, and the away crew started breaking them again. Another point of hull damage for each one sent back to red. That didn't take too long, and both ships were still standing. Special attacks were still getting the odd scratch through, and there's a lot of downtime between AI repairs - I wondered if the boarders could pull this off before my ship was whittled away. But my luck was in for the last few dodges, and when the flagship's systems came back online, one more round of breakages was all that was needed. My Zoltan & Mantis had a race for the final point, who could take down the helm or shields quickest - I have no idea who won, whoever it was broke the ship apart from the inside. The only surviving member of the original crew was my Engi engineer, so he'd have to go back and explain to Filip's mum & dad.
by the way, this all took
fucking ages.
(
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0200010040011G1357866236721434)
Inline Image:
http://s02.imageupper.com/1_t/4/G1357866236721434_1.jpgOnly the survivors get their names in the end credits, but those guys on the right, THEY'RE THE REAL HEROES! Not the boarding drone, he was a jerk.
Yakoob on 11/1/2013 at 03:52
Well, faetal being the awesome chap that he is decided to gift me the game so I guess I will be joining you guys on the Command Deck. Cheers sir, you are awesome :D
faetal on 11/1/2013 at 14:33
No worries. This is a game that absolutely cries out for viral gifting. Especially at half price :D
catbarf on 11/1/2013 at 15:03
Got to the final boss again, this time in a Kestrel B loaded to the gills- boarding team of two Mantises, a Crystal, Engi, Zoltan, two humans, and a Rock, Defense 2 and anti-ship drones, a weapon pre-igniter and that thing that gives 15% less cooldown, and a pretty much fully upgraded ship. Rocked the first stage... Then got wrecked by the second.
It's starting to look to me like this is a little more like other roguelikes in that if you don't have very specific gear by the final boss, you will lose. In this case it seems to be having some way to disable the drone control through shields, and a boarding team to deal with missiles.
faetal on 11/1/2013 at 15:23
I don't bother with defence 2 any more. They are great for everything prior to the flagship, but for that you want defence 1 which only targets missiles and boarding drones. For the same reason, I never keep the beam drone - great for carving up low level ships once you get rid of shields, but they don't spend enough time packing punch for the flagship.
